The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
IP telephony is a technology that allows voice telephone calls to be made over the worldwide packet data communications network known as the “Internet” without traversing the traditional public switched telephone network (PSTN). The increased availability of low cost Internet access and inexpensive IP telephony devices make using the Internet for telephone calls particularly attractive for end users. Moreover, aside from the cost of Internet access, transmitting data over the Internet is free for end users.
Because of the benefits of IP telephony, some business organizations have installed IP telephones (“IP phones”) that use a business organization's intranet for internal calls and the Internet for external calls. Each IP phone is a node on the network and has its own IP address and Media Access Control (MAC) layer address. A call manager manages calls in a manner similar to the way a switch manages calls in a conventional private branch exchange (PBX) and PSTN arrangement.
IP phone arrangements provide several advantages over conventional PBX arrangements. First, business organizations can use their existing broadband Internet access to make external calls, so additional Internet access connections are generally not required. Second, recurring costs can be significantly lower in IP phone arrangements since local and long distance telephone service charges are avoided completely. Although there is a capital expense required to purchase the IP phones, the long-term savings can easily exceed this expense. Third, IP phones are very mobile since the phone extension and privileges are associated with the physical IP phone, instead of a physical connection. Thus, IP phones can be physically moved within an organization and the IP phones retain their phone extensions and privileges.
Despite the advantages provided by IP phone arrangements over conventional PBX arrangements, IP phone arrangements do have some drawbacks. One problem is the difficulty in managing additions, deletions and changes to IP phones in large enterprise deployments that may have hundreds, or even thousands of IP phones. Currently, network administrators do not have centralized access to both the physical and logical data for IP telephony devices. The physical data specifies connection attributes of IP phones to a network, such as a switch address or port. The logical data specifies logical attributes of IP phones with respect to the network, such as extension numbers and IP addresses. Thus, physical and logical data must be manually maintained and updated, which can become infeasible in large IP telephony deployments.
Another problem is that large IP telephony deployments are more susceptible to being “hacked” by devices that have connectivity to the particular network and that “spoof” the MAC address of legitimate IP phones. Such devices are sometimes referred to as “phantom” phones. Without centralized tracking of IP telephony devices, network administrators have greater difficulty in identifying suspect IP telephony devices.
Based upon the foregoing, there is a need for an approach for managing IP telephony devices in networks that does not suffer from limitations in prior approaches. There is a further need for an approach for managing IP telephony devices in networks in a manner that includes both physical data and logical data for IP telephony devices. There is also a need for an approach for managing IP telephony devices in networks that provides for identification of suspect IP telephony devices.